


If you could go back…

by bioticgoddess



Category: Bucky Barnes/Winter Soldier - Fandom, MCU, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Steve Rogers/Captain America - Fandom, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-08-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:22:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26180344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bioticgoddess/pseuds/bioticgoddess





	If you could go back…

They had Pepper and Tony’s house to themselves, more or less. Bruce was out in the clearing they had designated as the staging ground for Steve’s journey into the past, at least it would be once he finished fine tuning the Quantum Tunnel 3.0. Bucky was coming in from the garage, a couple beers in hand and mobile phone cradled between his metal shoulder and ear. From the sound of things he was talking to Taryn. The Inhuman had taken off with the others - Pepper, little Morgan, Happy, Sam, Wanda, Rhodey, and Carol - to check on the status of the old Avengers’ Tower renovation before she and Wanda went off to “cause trouble”. He laughed, “Okay Doll. Yea…no. Don’t get into actual trouble, please. Haha. Yes, I promise we’re gonna take it easy. I love you too.”

Innocent sun-like grin on his face, the brunet handed his brother one of the two cold brown bottles. Taking the phone, he tapped the end call button and sat in one of the overstuffed cushioned chairs in what served as the Potts-Stark family room. Steve had popped off the screw top and taken a swig, the kind that downed about a third of the bottle in one go. The act didn’t go unnoticed and Bucky cocked his head, “Is what you wanted to talk to me about that bad?”

“Maybe, I mean, I don’t know,” he sighed, drawing his hand over his face. Only stopping to pinch the bridge of his nose and take a deep breath. Squeezing his eye shut he cut right to it, “If you could go back, live the time we lost in the ice and to HYDRA, would you?” When he opened his eyes, Steve fixed his gaze on Bucky. This was the person he’d known longest and best. Out of everyone in the world - out of time - there had always been James Buchanan Barnes and Steven Aaron Rogers. Then they’d been cleft apart by a single moment on an Austrian mountain. Here they were: Both well over a hundred years old and looking like millennials born in the mid and late 1980s.

He physically chewed that thought over, catching the inside of his lower lip between his canines. Several minutes passed before, nodding his head, the man was willing to answer. “It’s a nice thought but…no. I mean, don’t get me wrong, everything is always going to feel weird. There are references and experiences growing up that our friends have where we’re going to be lost. But I wouldn’t change my present to erase my past. My friends are here,” he raised his bottle to Steve, “my girl’s here,” He tapped the back of his phone, balanced on the arm of the chair, “And I have a life here that we couldn’t ever have had back in the 40s or 50s. With everything we’ve seen and done…I belong here.”

The blonde looked almost crestfallen, eyes fixed on the mouth of his beer bottle. “So you’re happy here,” he whispered, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. Of course he was. All the tech and futuristic things Bucky had been infatuated of were real now and, save for a handful of people, everyone they both loved was here. “When we were in the past, collecting the Infinity Stones, I saw Peggy.”

“Oh no. Steve.”

“No. Hold on. I was close enough that I could have touched her. If she’d turned to the left, she’d have seen me and I don’t know that I could have continued with the mission if that had happened,” a shaky breath escaped him. This was the most Bucky (or anyone) had seen of him breaking or broken since coming out of the ice fifteen years prior. There only exceptions were Peggy’s and Tony’s funerals and the immediate aftermath of The Snap. “I thought I had moved on, I really did. I thought I could pick up the pieces and build something new - even after we buried Peggy and then what happened in 2018. I thought that once we fixed what Thanos had done that it’d be fine and we could all just move on. But then I saw her and I knew. I knew it in my bones Buck. All these years I’ve been lying to myself.” His voice was breaking and he rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. 

Blinking, the other man swallowed and set his sweating bottle on the coffee table. “You can’t change the past Steve,” his voice was matter-of-fact but the look on his face was like he’d been back handed by a gorilla. The knot forming in Bucky’s stomach wasn’t novel, he’d felt it often on the run the three years before everything that happened in Germany and Wakanda. Now it was different. Steve was hiding something from him and he wasn’t sure he could get the blonde to tell him what it was.

A heavy silence hung between them. Swallowing hard, Bucky searched his brother’s face and blue eyes for some clue as to what he was planning. “Hypothetically speaking, if you could go back I’d want you to leave me wherever the fuck I am. I know you well enough to know that if this were something you’d do, you’d come rescue me and…just don’t do it Stevie.” The childhood nickname catching the blonde’s attention like a clarion call, “You can’t change the past and I…I don’t want it to be my future. That’s here and now, with the people I just hung up with. It’s your future too buddy. I know you miss Peggy but…”

Smiling weakly, Steve sighed and stared past Bucky and out the window, “I can’t change the past, I know.”

—

He caught the girls outside and motioned for Taryn to follow him. The Inhuman obliged, running a hand through her wind-blow hair. “What’s up Steve,” she asked, stopping at the edge of the driveway. He was heading to the meet up with the others at the Quantum Tunnel.

Clapping a gloved hand on her shoulders he asked, “You’ll take care of Bucky?”

Brow furrowed curiously, she tilted her head ever so slightly to the side, “Of course.”

“Good,” he pursed his lips and nodded several small nods, “Okay. I’m gonna go. See you when I get back.” With that he walked off, not seeing the increasingly puzzled expression that took over her features.

—

“How did you know he’d be on that bench,” Sam asked, setting the shield down inside his quarters in the tower. He hadn’t been comfortable asking the Winter Soldier about it in the days immediately following Steve’s return as an old man. Like all of their quarters, his was filled with boxes and piles of things that needed unpacking and organizing. It was part of why he’d chosen now to talk to Bucky about it - Taryn, Wanda, and the others were putting their own quarters together. For Wanda in particular, it was a distraction that aided her in dealing with Vision’s own death.

A tired chuckle reverberated through Bucky’s chest, “He’d said that if he stayed in the past he’d make sure to come back to us. He’d be waiting on a bench by the lake because the view was nice and we - I - would see him there.” Shaking his head he continued, this was the second time he’d talked through the conversation he and Steve had had, “I tried to talk him out of it, just didn’t realize it was a serious discussion at the time. He phrased it as hypotheticals so I…I thought he was kidding. That he was working through his own time travel induced concerns from seeing Peggy when they jumped to the 1970s. Never crossed my mind that he’d seriously…stay behind.” Swallowing he laughed at himself. Despite telling Steve he’d miss him, in partial jest, he hadn’t actually thought that the blonde would stay in the past. 

Clapping a hand on his shoulder, Sam offered, “You’ve still got all of us Barnes.”

That made the centenarian smile. They were, as he heard Taryn call to him from down the hall, far from the end of the story.


End file.
